To all Best Winers,
I’m probably starting this thing the wrong way but there’s a reason there isn’t a lot of Swiss wine in America.
The Swiss.
These people are relentless wine drinkers. They are also fiercely loyal to their local wares. The Swiss have a wonderfully nagging tendency to fervently support their local market.
What does this mean? The limited amount of high-quality Swiss wine produced barely makes it off the shores of Lake Geneva. It all gets consumed by a country that is perhaps a 3 hour drive from east to west.
Accordingly, we here in the states often don’t see the Best of the Best Switzerland has to offer, with only the radically over-priced, undernourished, larger production examples making it here to the states.
Until now.
It just so happens that that smooth talker Eric Solomon managed to finagle a few boxes of what is arguably Switzerland’s greatest white wine away from the cellars of Louis Bovard to make, not a splash, but a ripple, and test the (lake) waters to see if the genre had any chance of thriving.
We say it certainly does.
When we tasted these two enthralling white wines from Louis Bovard we instantly became believers, and bought every last bottle we could get our hands on.
Which isn’t a lot. We’re talking a whopping 72 bottles between the two wines. But, then again, who has any idea how much Swiss wine one actually needs, right?
That being said, I’m sure we have 72 more bottles of Swiss white wine currently in stock than 99.9% of the retailers in the western U.S. I can’t vouch for New York or the Carolinas, where there’s an extreme ex-pat Swiss population. (Just kidding, I made that up.)
Ok, on to the wines. Louis Bovard is essentially the (insert name of some uber-famous French vintner who’s wines sell for hundreds of dollars here) of Switzerland. He is the 10th generation of his family to farm these precipitous, steeply terraced vineyards on the shores of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman if you’re Euro-cool) and the winery has quietly produced the greatest white wine in Switzerland for a number of years.
I guess it’s only fitting that one of the most beautiful grape growing areas of the world produces beautiful wines. At least 17 different wines at last count. The Bovards are tinkerers, and constantly taking the opportunity to learn about their exceptional terroir by planting a number of varieties and just seeing how they do.
Yet that’s a story for another day. In the meantime, Eric decided to bring in a couple of their ‘rock star’ wines because if you’re going to make inroads into a previously untapped market, you might as well bring your A-game.
The first wine is their 2011 Buxus Sauvignon Epesses Grand Cru. This Sauvignon Blanc is grown in the Epesses section of their terraced wonderland. The slope of the hillside is 30 degrees so all work has to be done by hand as tractors will simply roll into the lake! The wine sees 11 months in French oak barrels but does not come across as oaky whatsoever.
What does it taste like? Think Dagueneau or Cotat from the Loire Valley for you French wine geeks out there, minus some of the piercing minerality. The barrel aging gives the texture and richness of a great white Bordeaux, but the soils impart a clean river-rock character with a strong dash of ‘freshness’ from the lake influence. In short, one of the coolest Sauvignons I’ve tasted this year. Rich yet snappy, enthralling, unique, super-geeky. Cool.
Same could be said for Bovard’s flagship wine, the 2011 Dézelay Médeinette Grand Cru. This is truly historical wine by Swiss standards, produced from the native Chasselas (but the groovier ‘Roux’ clone) and grown in vineyards with an even steeper 33 degree incline (!). The vines here yield less than two pounds per plant, a yield that is almost not worth it for white wine production.
The winery says the wine can age for 20 years and we have no reason to not believe them, they should know! It comes across as a super-fresh Savoie on steroids, dense like a white Rhone, floral, with fresh mountain spring notes and a hint of roundness from the barrel aging, though the wine is not marked by oak. It is simply one of the coolest, funnest, geekiest, dorkiest most interesting white wines I’ve tasted this year.
Ok, done talking. I’m ready to start drinking. Yodelayheehoo!
Kyle Meyer and Tristen Beamon, Proprietors, BestWinesOnline.com
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